tat] CHAPTER IIT WHAT ARE “HISTORY” AND “HISTORICAL SOURCES”? The Meaning of “History” ‘Tux Exist word history is derived from the Greck noun leropic, meaning learning. Asused by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, history meant a systematic ac- count of a set of natural phenomena, whether or not chronological ordering was a factor in the account; and that usage, though rare, still prevails in English in the phrase natural history. In the coutse of time, however, the equivalent Latin word scientia (Enj science) came to be used more regularly to designate non-chronological systematic accounts of natural phe- nomena; and the word history was reserved usually for accounts of phenomena (especially human af- fairs) in chronological order. By its most common defi the word history now means “the past of mankind.” Compare the Ger- man word for history — Geschichte, which is derived from geschehen, meaning to happen. Geschichte is that which kas happened. This meaning of the word history is often encountered in such overworked phrases as “all history teaches” or “the lessons of tory. — “TE requires only a moment's reflection to recognize that in this sense history cannot be reconstructed. ‘The past of mankind for the most part is beyond re-AaconsiucTes Bes 2 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY Even those who are blessed with the best mem- cannot re-create theit own past, since in the life there must be event peso uy ,, and fancies that made no tlle tie they eos, or hae since been forgotten. A fortiori, the experience of a generation Jong dead, most of whom left no records or whose records, if they exist, have never been disturbed by che historian’s touch, is beyond the possibility of total of tr and “Subjectivity” ruins, parchments, and coins survive {rom the past. Otherwise, the facts of history are derived from testimony and therefore are facts of They can -d, heard, or meaning, They cannot , felt, tasted, i, nel ‘They may be said to be symbolic or repre- ‘of something that once was real, but they have Tio objective reality of their own. In other words, they exist the observer's or historian’s mind (and thus may be called “subjective”). To be studied Me of acquiring nowledge independent of one's personal reactions), a thing must first be an_ab- ject; it must have an independent existence outside the Homan mind, Recollections, however, do not have existence outside the human mind; and most of his- tory is based upon recollections — that is, written or spoken testimony. “gustony” AND “‘sustonicaL sources” 43 Avvulgar prejadi edge as inferior ledge, largely be- ‘has also come to mean lusory” or “based upon personal considerations,” and hence either “untrue” or “biased.” Knowledge may be acquired, however, by an impartial and judi- cially detached investigation of mental images, pro- cesses, concepts, and precepts that are one or more steps removed from objective reality. Impartiality and “objectivity,” to be sure, may be more difficult to ob- tain from such data, and hence conclusions based upon them may be more debatable; but such data and conclusions, if true, are not necessarily inferior to other kinds of knowledge per se. The word subjec- tive is not used here to imply disparagement_of apy _-applica- tion of special kinds of safeguards against error, Artifacts as Sources of History 7g ae Only where relics of human happenings can be” ve found —a potshérd, a coin, @ rain, a manuscript, book, a portrait, a stamp, a piece of wreckage, a strand of bai archeological or anthropologicat ie- i mains —do we have objects other than words that i the historian can study, These objects, however, ae never the happenings or the events themselves. If atti facts, they are the results of events; if written docu, ‘ents, they may be the results or the records of events Whether artifacts or documents, they are raw ma. terials out of which history may be waitten To be sure, certain historical truths can be derived immediately from such materials. The historian can“ UNDERSTANDING HISTORY discover that a piece of pottery was handwrought, that a building was made of mortared brick, that a manu- i hand, that a painting was done in oils, that sanitary plumbing was known in an old city, and many other such data from direct observation of artifacts surviving from the past, But ° the dynamic or genetic (the becoming) as well as the static (the being or the become) and he aims at being interpretative (explaining why and how things hap- ied and were interrelated) as well as_descriptive ing what happened, when and where, and who took part). Besides, such descriptive data as can be mediately from surviving arti- facts are only a small pat of the petiods to which they belong. A historical context can be given to them onh placed in a human setting. That human beings lived in the brick building with sanitary plumb- 3g, ate 0 jwrought pottery, and admired the oil painting that were mentioned above might perhaps easily be inferred. But the inference may just as easily be mistaken, for the building might have been a stable, the piece of pottery might have been from a roof e painting might have been a hidden-away relic with no admirers whatsoever; and an infinity of other suppositions is possible. Without further evidence the human context of these artifacts can never be recaptured with any degree of certainty. “qustony” AND “HISTORICAL souRcES” 45 Historical Knowledge Limited by Incompleteness of the Records Unfortunately, for most of the past we not only have no further evidence of the human setting in which to place surviving artifacts; we do not even have the artifacts. Most human affairs happen with- cout leaving vestiges or records of any kind behind them, The past, having happened, has perished for- ever with only occasional traces. To begin with, al- though the absolute number of historical writings is staggering, only a small part of what happened in the past was ever observed. A moment's reflection is suffi- Gient to establish that fact. How much, for example, of what you do, say, or think is ever observed by any- one (including yourself)? Multiply your unobserved actions, thoughts, words, and physiological processes by 2,000,000,000, and you will get a rough estimate of the amount of unobserved happenings that go on in the world all the time. And only a part of what was observed in the past was remembered by those who observed it; onlya part of what was remembered swag recorded; only apart. of what_was recorded has survived; only a part of what has survived has come . sttention; onl) f what has tothe histavans’ attention; only a 5 credible; only a-part-of what is credible has been grasped; and only a_part.of what hhas_been_grasped_can be expounded or narrated by the historian. The whole history of the past (what has been called history-asactuality) can be known to him only through the surviving record of it (history-as- record), and most of historyas-cecord is only the sur46 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY. viving part of the recorded pact of the remembered part of the observed part of that whole. Even when the record of the past is derived directly from archeo- logical or anthropological remains, they are yet only the scholars’ selected parts of the discovered parts of the chance survivals from the total past. $0 far as the historian has an external object to hap- story-as.actuality) but the surviving records of what happened (history-as-xecord). History can be told only from history-as-ecord; and history as told (spoken-or-written-history) is only the historians’ ex- pressed part of the understood part of the credible part of the discovered part of history-as-record, Before the past is set forth by the historian, itis likely to have gone through eight separate steps at each of which some of it has been lost; and there is no guarantee lat what remains is the most important, the largest, the most valuable, the most represent the most end In other words the ject” that the ian studies is not only incompl is markedly variable as records are lost or Tediscovered, History as the Subjective Process of Re-creation From this probably inadequate remainder the his torian must do what he can to restore the total past of mankind, He has no way of doing it but in terms of his own experience. That experience, however, has taught him (1) that yesterday was different from to- day in some ways as well as the same as today in ISTORY” AND “uISTORICAL souRcESs” 47 others, and (2) that his own experience is both like and unlike other men’s, It is not alone his own mem- ories interpreted in the light of his own experience that he must try to apply to the understanding of historical survivals; it i the memories of many other people as well. But one’s own memories are abstract images, not ;, and one’s reconstructions of ‘others’ memories, even when reinforced by contem- porary records and relics, are likely to be even more abstract. Thus the utmost the historian can grasp of history-asactuality, no matter how real it may have seemed while it was happening, can be nothing mote than a mental image or a series of ment based upon an application of his own experience, real and vicarious, to part of a part of a part of a part of a part of a part of a part of a part of a vanished whole. Tn short, the historian’s aim is verisimilitude with regard to a perished past—a subjective process — rather than experimental certainty with regard to an objective reality, H. tion to the truth” about the_past_as_constant_comrec- recognizing that that truth has in fact eluded hi forever. Here is the essential difference between the study of man’s past and of man’s physical environ- ment. Physics, for example, has an extrinsic and whole object to study —the physical universe—that does not change because the physicist is studyin, matter how much his understanding of it may change; history has only detached and scattered objects to study (documents and relics) that do not together46 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY make up the total object that the incomplete and frequently changing under of it can re-create it. Some of the natural scientists, such as geologists and paleozoologists, in so far as the objects they study are traces from a perished past, greatly resemble historians in this regard, but differ from them, on the other hand, in so far as historians have to deal with human testimony as well as physical traces. Once the historian understands his predicament, his task is simplified. His responsibility shifts from the obligation to acquire a com eof the irrecoverable past by means of the surviving evi- dence to that of recréating a verisimilar image of as much of the past as the evidence makes recoverable. ‘The latter task iS the easier one, For the historian history becomes only that part of the human past which can be meaningfully reconstructed from the available records and from inferences regarding their setting. Historical Method and Historiography Defined ‘The_process of critical the records and survivals of the ‘historical method. The imaginative reconstruct: the past from the data derived by that process is called historiography (the writing of histon ‘historical inethod and historiography (both of which are frequently “uistory” AND “sisroRrcaL sources” 49 method)? the historian endeavors to reconstruct as uch of the past of mankind as he can. Even in this Jimited effort, however, the historian is handicapped. He rarely can tell the story even of a part of the past “as it actually oceurzed,” although the great Ger- man historian Leopold von Ranke enjoined him to do so, because in addition to the probable incomplete- ness of the ecords, he is faced with the inadequacy of the human imagination and of human speech for such recreation, But he can endeavor, to use dan’s phrase, to approach the actual past ” For the past conceived of as something that “actually occurred” places obvious limits upon the kinds of record and of imagination that he may use, He must be sure that his records really come from the past and are in fact what they seem to_be and that his imagination is directed toward re-creation arid not creation. These limits distinguish history from fiction, poetry, drama, and fantasy. Imagination in Historiography The historian is not permitted to imagine things that could not reasonably have happened, For certain purposes that we shall later examine he may imagine50 [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY things that might have happened, But he is frequently required to imagine things that must have happened, For the exercise of the imagination in history it is impossible to lay down rules except very general ones. It is a platitude that the historian who knows con- temporary life best_will_nnderstand_past_life_hest. Since the human mentality has not changed notice- ably in historic times, present generations can under- stand past generations in terms of their own experi- ence. Those historians can make the best analogies and contrasts who have-the greatest awareness of possible analogies and contrasts — that is, the widest no platitude tells how to acquire a wide range of those desizable qualities and knowl- edge or how to transfer them to an understanding of the past. For they are not accumulated alone by pre- cept or example, industry and prayer, though these may help. And so historiography,? the 5 ing of historical data into narrative or expositions by writing history books and articles or delivering history lectures, is not easily made the subject of rules and regulations. Some room must be left for native talent and inspiration, and pethaps that is a good thing. But since precepts and examples may help, an effort be made (see especially Chapters VII-XTI) to set forth a few of them, ography.” “wastory” AND “‘sisTORICAL souRces” 51 History of Historical Method Historical method, however, not only can be made the subject of rules and regulations; for over two thou- sand years it has been. Thucydides, who in the fifth century 8.6. wrote his famous history of the Pelopon- nesian War, conscientiously told _his readers how he speeches to put into fhe mouths of contemporaries, he tried to make them as like the originals as his sources of knowledge permitted. He hoped to conform both to the spirit of the speaker and the letter of the speech; but since stenographic reports were nat avail- ible, he hiad sometimes to supply the speaker's words, ‘expressed a5 I thought he would be likely to express them,” * Since Thucydides’ day, many historians have writ- ten, briefly or at length, upon historical method. Out- standing examples are Lucian, Ibn Khaldun, Bodin, Mably, Voltaire, and Kanke, though s niques of history. With Emst Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphiloso- phie (1st ed., Leipzig, 1889}, the modern and more academic discussion of the subject may be said to have begun. Since Bemheim’s exposition a number of other textbooks have been published. Although none of them surpass his masterpiece, peculiar merits in- tended for patticular kinds of readers are found in52 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY ee i some. Notable examples are the Langlois and Seigno- ‘ bos volume for Frenchmen; the Johnson and the Nevins volumes for Americans; the Harsin and the Kent booklets for younger students; and the Wolf, the Hockett, and the Bloch and Renouvin books for students of specialized fields of history In all of these works and literally dozens of others like them there isa stiking degree of unanimity re- garding the methods of historical analysis. For our purposes these methods will be considered under four fuite cl esting (1) the election of subject for investiga tion; (2) the ‘collection of probable sources of in- ‘poke ie formation on that snbiest; (3) U oe Opies part); and (4) the extraction of credible particles from the sources (Or parts of source: palin ‘The synthesis of the particulars thus ‘eived is oe Lohisoriography, about which there is less unanimity a4 Yon so the textbooks. For purposes of clarity we shall ‘pztiaelrhave to treat analysis and synthesis as if they were grein discrete processes, but we shall see that at various Gm stages they cannot be entirely sepaiated. Sources ‘The historian's problems in choosing a subject and collecting information upon it (the latter somet dignified by the Greek name of heurist cussed in Chapter IV. Historical heuristics do not d from any other bibViogray ino faras printed books are concemed. The historian, however, has to use many materials that are not in books. Where these are archeological, epigraphicel, “qrstory” AND “HISTORICAL souxcES” 53 or numismatical materials, he has to depend largely on museums, Where they are oficial records, he may have to search for them in archives, courthouses, gavern- mental libraries, ete. Where they are private papers not available in official collections, he may have to hunt among the papers of business houses, the muni- ment rooms of ancient castles, the prized possessions of autograph collectors, the records of parish churches, ete, Having some subject in mind, with more ot less definite delimitation of the persons, areas, times, and functions (ie., the economic, pé diplomatic, or other occupational aspects) involved, he looks for materials that may have some bearing upon those persons in that area at that time function- ing in that fashion. These materials are his sources. ‘The more precise his delimitations of persons, area, time, and function, the more relevant his sources are ly to be (see Chapter X). The Distinction between Primary and Other Original Sources ‘Written and oral sources are divided into two kinds: primary and secondary. A primary source is the testi- mony of an eyewitness, or of a witness by any other of the senses, or of a mechai the | device like the dicta- phone — that is, of one who or that which was present at The events of which he or it tells (hereafter called simply eyewitness). A secondary source isthe testi- ‘mony of anyone who is not an eyewitness — that is, of one who was not present at the-« if which he tells. A primary source must thus have been produced by a contemporary of the events it narrates. It does rr: BEE: Ont 6 @: grunt” ug by eat : Oe : Fae yntanees that Qzvaep may be called “ori b ey ak us source of the information it provides. These five mean- ie “f-. ings of the word may overlap, but they are not syn- pia i Seater dee (Ci, 9 5 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY not, however, need to be original in the legal sense of the word original ‘ — that is, the very document (usu- ally the first written draft) whose contents are the subject of discussion — for quite often a later copy ot a printed edition will do just a5 well; and in the case of the Greek and Roman classics seldom are any but later copies available. iginal” is a word of so many different meanings would have been better to avoid it in precise historical discourse, It can be, and frequently is, used to denote five different conditions of a document, all of which aze important to the historian, A document (1) because it contains fresh ind creative ideas, (2) because it is not translated from the language in which it was first written, (3) be- cause it is in its earliest, unpolished stage, (4) because text is the approved text, unmodified and untam- pered with, and (5) because itis the earliest available ‘onymous. Unfortunately, the phrase “original sources” has be- ‘come common among historians, and it is desirable to define its usage accurately. It is best used by the his- in only two senses — (1) to describe a source, “unpolished, uncopied, untranslated, as it issued from ‘Dow A 5) [AaeeGeh the hand of the authors (eg, the orginal draft of a source that gives the earli the Magna Carta) or » the origin) rega lable inform: thequ TCE Join H. Wigmore, Students Textbook ofthe Law of Bx pp. 235-6. mony. Henc “wisroay” AND “HisTosicAL sources” 55 have been lost (in the sense that Livy is an source” for some of our knowledge of the kings o Rome). In using the phrase historians are frequently guilty of looseness. An effort will be made t6 use it Porneny here only in the two senses just defined, eed re? Ke wrnpennD Primary sources need not be original in either of these two ways. They need be “original” only in the Ug. ce.) confusion between original soutces. and primary sources. The confusion arisés Kom a particularly care- less use of the word original. It is often used by his torians as a synonym for manuscript or archival. Yet a moment's reflexion will suffice to indicate that a manu- script source is no more likely to be primary than a printed source, and that it may be a copy rather than the “original.” Even where it is a primary source, it may deal with a subject upon which earlier informa- Je, Hence a manuscript source is in either of the two relevant senses of that word. It should be remembered that the historian when analyzing sources is interested chiefly in particulars and that he asks of each particular whether it is based on first-hand or second-hand testi- makes small difference to him whether a document is its actual author" or a copy, except in so far as such| originality may aid him to determine its author and therefore whether it is primary or, if secondary, from what mote independent testimony it is derived. Stu- dents of history readily depend upon specialists in e: skills and archival techniques to publish collec- ae56 [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY tions of manuscripts and are printed form. Primary Particulars Rather than Whole Primary Sources Sought As has just been indicated, the historian is less con- a source as a whole than with the particu- in that source, It is easy to conceive of a ly primary that will contain secondary ling to use them in (and therefore less usable) data. The general who writes a communiqué thereby provides a source that may be for the most part primary but for many details secondary, because he must necessarily depend upon his subordinates for information regarding much that ‘Aeneas, tell about things part of which he was” and yet may also have to depend upon “an official spokesman” or “a source usually con- sidered reliable” for some of his information. The careful historian wall not use all the statements of such military communiqués or newspaper dispatches with equal confidence. On the other hand, should he find, as he frequently does, that # book that is essentially secondary (like a biography or even a work of fiction) contains, for example, personal letters or touches of directly observed local color, he may well use them as first-hand evidence if they are genuine and relevant. Sources, in other words, whether primary_or_sec- ondary, ate imporlant to the historian because they contain primary particulars (or lars (or at least suggest leads to primary particulars). The particulars they furnish “qistory” AND “HISTORICAL souncEs” 57 are trustworthy not because of the book or article or report they are in, but because of the reliability of the narrator as a witness of those particulars. This point ‘will be elaborated later (see pp. 139-44) The Document ‘The word document (from docere, to teach) has also been used by historians in several senses. On the cone hand, it is sometimes used to mean a written source of historical information as contrasted with oral testimony or with artifacts, pictorial survivals, and archeological remains. On the other, it is sometimes reserved for only official and state papers such as trea laws, grants, deeds, etc. Still another sense is con- tained in the word documentation, which, as used by the historian among others, signifies any process of proof based upon any kind of source whether written, cal. For the sake of clarity, if seems best to employ the word document in the last, the most comprehensive meaning, which is etymo- logically cortect, using written document and official document: to designate the less comprehensive cate- gories. Thus document becomes synonymous with source, whether written or not, oficial or not, primary or not. The “Human” and the “Personal” Document ‘The human document has been defined as “an ac- count of individual experience which reveals the indi- Vidual’s actions as a human agent and as a participant Diese downs} t 58 [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY in social life.” * The personal document has been de- fined as “any self-revealing record that intentionally or unintentionally yields information regarding the struc- ture, dynamics and functioning of the author's mental life.” © The first definition is by a soc phasizes “experience . . . in social of the human document. The second definition is by a psychologist and emphasizes “the author's mental life” as an element of the personal document. Yet the words human document and personal document have been used interchangeably.” ‘The two kinds of documents seem to have one essential characteristic in common; a human, personal reaction to the events with which they deal. To both sociologist and psychologist it is the * Horbet Blames, An Appa! of Thomas and Zrnanigcks "The Polish Pazant in Evsope and. America’ ("Critiques of Research in {he Social Steet," Val. New Yor, 1959), P39. “Gordon W. “The Use of Peeonal Documents in Poy chologicel Science (New York, Socisl Science Resexrch Counc to Blumer, p. vil, CF, Allpoet, 1 paycholopist sn firetperton and third person documents. They revolve rrces of mater, observer tlablty, and techniques of presentation ian, who as neary a5 possible tlementary data to primary particulars, these are likely to be ive rather than qualitative diferences. That i to sy, a participant 4 battle will probably have more mumesous fisthand data to give ‘may be lese mis taken than the stiperon account by a pat ticipant is valuable, a5 evidence, only for the paticuars which thet participant gives on fitsthind testimony ot for leads to first-hand festimony; and a third:peson account of the same butle by a news: paper corespondent is 128 evidence, only forthe same kind Of data, Allport agres that “the fst-perton and third peso docu Ients . . both deal with the single ease and on this question wall stand of fall together.” See also Alport, pp. 19-20. “ntsroay” AND “‘wisToRIcAL sources” 59 degree of subjectivity in these documents that distin- guishes them from other documents. The best exam- ples * seem to be documents written in the first person = like autobiographies and letters —or documents written in the third person but describing human re. actions and attitudes — like newspaper accounts, court records, and records of social agencies. To the historian the difference between first-person and third-person documents is not of major signifi cance. That is true for at least three reasons. (1) Often an apparently third-person document is in fact first person (25, for example, the Mémoires of Lafayette or The Education of Henry Adams). (2) Genuinely third-person documents in so far as they are “histor- icable” * must ultimately rest on first-hand observation (whether by the author or by someone consulted by the author).°* (3) Every document, no matter how thoroughly the author strove to be impartial and de- tached, must exhibit to a greater or lesser extent the author's philosophies and emphases, likes and dislikes, and hence betrays the author's inner personality. Ed- ward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Em- pire, Johann Gustav Droysen's Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen or Hippolyte Taine’s French Revolution Blumer, p. 29. is word to designate “capable of critical Fleaze note that itis not a synonym 19 See note 7 above, 1 Ct, Havelock Elis, Dance of Life (Boston, 1923), pp. 8-12, where the diferent interpretations of Napoleon by H. G. Wells and ‘Ble Faure are attributed to the diference between Wells and Faure60 may be regarded as secondary, third-person accounts of remote history, or they may be (and indeed have been) " regarded as autobiographical writings of Gib- bon, Droysen, and Taine. Scholarly reviews of schol- arly books ought to be among the least likely places to hunt for personal reactions (except, as sometimes hap- pens with the best reviews, the reviewer deliberately sets out to present his own point of view); and yet how often private philosophies, attitudes, likes, and dislikes are unintentionally betrayed by the most sober reviewers! Whether a document is to be examined for reveals about its subject or for what it reveals its author — whether, in other words, it is a third-person or a first-person document — thus de- pends upon the examiner's rather than the author's in- tention. For the same reason the term personal document is to the historian synonymous with the term Auman document, These terms were invented by social sci- ly to employ them. To UNDERSTANDING HISTORY human and personal, since they are the work_of hu man beings and shed light upon their authors as wel “sqistoRY” AND “HISTORICAL soURcES” 61 as upon the subjects the authors were trying to ex- ound, Sometimes, indeed, they betray the author's petsonality, private thoughts, and social life more re- Welingly an they ings he had under observation. Here, too, a document's significance may Rave a greater selationship to the intention of the his- torian then to that of the author, Sometimes the his- torian may learn moze about the author than the au-{ us } CHAPTER VI THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY, OR EXTERNAL CRITICISM So far it has been assumed that the documents dealt with have been authentic. The problem of authenticit seldom concerns the sociologist or psychologist or an. thropologist, who generally has a living subject under his eye, can see him as he prepares his autobiogcaphy and can cross-examine him about doubtfol points, Even in the law coutts the question of authenticity of documents becomes a difficult problem only on rare occasions, when the writer or witnesses to the writin, cannot be produced But for historical documents those occasions are not rare, They are in fact frequent for manuscript sources; and if doubt 2s to authenticit aves lest often for punted ours, it biease ro ly some s itor has of authenticating them. ee A Forged or Misleading Documents Forgeties of documents in whole or in part without being toul, are common enough to hee the cata istorian constantly on his guard, “Historical docu- ments” are fabricated for several reasons, Sometimes they are used to bolster a false claim or title, A well- known example is the Donation of Constantine, which + Wigmore, pp. 326-56. ‘THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTION'Y 9 used to be cited on occasion to bolster a theory that the popes had a wide territorial claim in the west. In a4qo Lotenzo Valla proved, chiefly by means of an- achronisms of style and allusion, that it had been forged. At other times documents are counterfeited for sale, Counterfeit letters of Queen Marie Antoinette ‘used to turn up frequently.* A Philadelphia autograph Gealer named Robert Spring once manufactured hun- dreds of skillful forgeries in order to supply the de- mand of collectors. A recent notorious example of forgery was the “correspondence” of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rotledge, palmed off on the Atlantic Menthly in 1928 Sometimes fabrication is due to less mercenary con- siderations. Political propaganda largely accounts for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a “document” pre- tending to reveal a ruthless Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.? Sometimes historical “facts” are based only ‘on some practical joke, as in the case of H. L. Menck- ‘en's much cited atticle on the “history” of the bath- tub, or of Alexander Woollcott’s mocking letter of en- dorsement of Dorothy Parker's husband (of which he never sent the original to the supposed addressee, al- though he did send the carbon copy to the endorsee).* ‘The Mémoires of Madame d'Epinay are a striking ex T Loa Action, Lectures on the French Revolution (London, 1940), FP: 361 Y See} 8 Gaits, An Apprainal of the Protocols of Zion (New ‘York, 2943) TCE. D. MacDougal, Hoaxes (New York, 1949), pp. 302-95 ‘Woolleott: His Life and His World Dorothy Parke, reviewing A. by SH Adams (New York, 1945) in the Chicago Sun Book Week of June 10, 2945:1 UNDERSTANDING mistoRY ample of fabrication of a even respectable Toate ee omnes quite genuine documents are intended = ee certain contemporaries and hence have mised subsequent hitorins. statement supposed eye cats Emperor Leopold II's views on the rench Revolution misled Marie Antoinette and sub- sequently even the most careful historians until it was cxposed, in 2894 as a wishful statement of some Ha it Ta days when spies were expected to pen oil fa the post wate of eters would ooca sionally try to outwit them by taming their curiosity tothe advantage of the one spied upon rather than to a a spy or his employer." And when censors might condemn books to be burned and writers to be imprisoned, authors could hardly be blamed if the igned other’ names to thei work. For in- : ascribed to otk i that posible tobe to sepia about eer ich may be genuine though not what it seems Bernheim has provided alist sf documents that were : : lered unauthentic but are now accepted.* Perhaps it was hypercriticism of this og detain Allan ‘Nevis, oh V, pp. Nevin, Gatewey to History (Boston, Geschichtsphilosophie (6th ed; Leipzig, 1908), pp. 376-90 at ‘que PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY kind that led Vincent Starrett to write his verse en- titled “After Much Striving for Fame”: It would be rather jolly, I think, To be the original authority On some obseure matter of literature os faith Upon which, in one’s leisure One had jotted down an inaccurate pamphlet; Occasionally misrepresentations of the nature of printed works result from editor’ tricks, Tt is still panatter of dispute which of the many writings attrib- iited to Cardinal Richelieu were in fact written or Uistated by him; and litle of the so-called Mémoires ’ de Jean de Witt and Testament politique de Covbert ‘vere in fact vaitten by John de Witt and Colbert. The memoirs atiributed to Condorcet and to Weber, foster brother of Marie Antoinette, and several wor ascribed to Napoleon I are by others than their Teged authors, Even issues of daly newspapers have ‘been manufactured long after the dates they bear. The Moniteur furnishes some good examples (see p. 307 above). Several Diaries of Napoleon have been Frade up by others from his writings. ‘The circum- Stances of the forgery or misrepresentation of histor: jeal documents may often themselves reveal impor tant 1 cultural, and biographical information — ‘but not about the same events or persons as if they were genuine 7 Quoted by permision of Mr. St ret,= UNDERSTANDING HISTORY Tests of Authenticity To distinguish a hoax or a misrepresentation from a genuine document, the historian has to use tests that are common also in police and legal detection ‘Making the best guess he can of the date of the docu- ment (see below pp. 138 and 147-8), he examines the ‘materials to see whether they are not anachronistic: paper was rare in Evrope before the ffteenth century, and printing was unknown; pencils did not exist there before the sixteenth century; typewriting was not in- vented until the nineteenth century; and India paper came only at the end of that century, The historian also examines the ink for signs of age or for anachto- nistic chemical composition. Making his best guess of the possible author of the document (see below pp. he sees if he can identify the handwriting, , seal, letterhead, or watermark. Even when ie handwriting is unfamiliar, it can be compared with authenticated specimens. One of the unfulélled cds of the historian is more of what the French call “isographies” — dictionaries of biography giving ex- amples of handwriting. For some periods of history, experts using techniques known as paleography and diplomatics, first systematized by Mabillon in the seventeenth century (see p. 127 below), have long known that in certain regions at certain times hand: writing and the style and form of official documents ‘were more or less conventionalized. Seals have been the subject of special study by sigillographers, and ex: perts can detect faked ones (see below, p. 128). Anachronistic style (idiom, orthography, or punctua- ‘THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY tion) can be detected by specialists who ave familie with contemporary waiting * Otten spe tng pati names and signal a $ would also unhistoric grammar. Anachronet ro erences to events (too earl or too Ite o too reno) ing of a document at a tim ioe weer ‘ould not possibly have been at the pies designated (the alibi) uncovers fraud. Sometimes the shill frger has all too carefully followed historical sources and his product becomes to, us in certain passages; 0 ; eee "and invention, he is shrewd enough eS avoid detection ia that fashion he is given away by the absence of trivia and otherwise unknown det from his manufactured account." Usvally, howevet # the document is where it ought to be—for ex 2 family’s archives, ot among a busines Gem's or lawyer's papers, or ina governmental bu- reau’s records (but not merely because it is ina brary or in an amateur’ autograph, collection) provenance (or its custody, as the lawyers cal ‘ceates a presumption of its genuineness. LBurope, XXV ( 35 Ch. They Krew the Wasi id from Béraud, My Friend Rov 938).324 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY Garbled Documents A document that in its entirety or in large parti the replt ofa delete elec ty dase tay oe ‘be hard to evaluate, but it sometimes causes less trouble than does the document that is unauthentic only in small past. For such parts are usually the re- sult, not of studied falsehood, but of unintentional error. They occur most frequently in copies of docu- ments whose originals have disappeared, and are gener- ally due to that kind of erzor of omission, repetition, or addition with which anyone who has ever made copies soon becomes familiar. Sometimes they are the result, however, not of carelessness but of deliberate intention to modify, supplement; or continue the original. Such a change may be made in good faith in the first instance, care being exerted to indicate the differences between the original text and the glossary or continuations, but future copyists ate often less cxefl or more coniused and make no sich dine ‘This problem is most familiar i gists and Bible cites For they ttdon have ogi less than eight centuries and several stages of oe duction removed from the original —that is to ca copies of copies of copies, and sometimes copies of ttanslations of copies of translations of copies, and so on. The philologists give to this problem of estab- lishing an accurate text the name textual er a fe Popa it is also called lower criticism, ¢ historian has born lologists and Bible cate a | ‘THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY 18 The Restoration of Texts ‘The technique is complicated but can be briefly described, The first task is to collect as many copies of the dubious text as diligent search will reveal. Then they are compared. It is found that some contain swords or phrases ot whole passages that are not con- tained in others. The question then arises: Are those words, phrases or passages additions to the original text that have found their way into some copies, or are they omissions from the others? To answer that ques- tion it is necessary to divide the available copies into fone or more “families” — that is, groups of texts which closely resemble each other and therefore seem to be derived, directly or indisectly, from the same aster copy. Then by 2 comparison of the texts within ‘each family an effort is made to establish the com- parative age of each in relation to the others If the Inembers of the same family are largely copied from each other, as this arrangement in families frequently Shows, the oldest one is in all probability (but not necessarily) the one nearest the original. This process is continued for all the families. When the copy near- est the original in each family is discovered, a com- parison of all of these “father” copies will usually then reveal words and passages that are in some but not in others. Again the question arises: Are those words and passages additions to the copies that have them or omissions from the copies that do not? The most accurate available wordings of the passages added or omitted by the respective copyists are then prepared, Changes in handwritings, anachronisms inUNDERSTANDING HISTORY grammar, orthography, or factual detail, and opinions or errors unlikely to have been those of the original author frequently reveal additions by a later hand, When the style and contents of passages under discussion may be attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they were parts of his original manu- script but were omitted by later copyists; and when they cannot be attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they were not parts of his original manu- script. In some cases, a final decision has to await the discovery of still more copies. In many instances the original text can be approximately or entirely restored. yy a similar method one can even guess the con- tents, at least in part, of a “father” manuscript even when no full copy of it is in existence. The historian Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, a student of Ranke, at- tempted to reconstruct a text that he reasoned must be the ancestor of several eleventh-century chronicles in which he had noted striking similarities. By adding together the passages that appeared to be “descend from an unknown chronicle, he made a guess as to its contents. Overa quarter of a century later the ancestor chronicle was in fact found, and proved to be exten- sively like Giesebrecht’s guess. Sciences Auxiliary to History The problem of textual restoration does not fre- quently distarb the present-day historian, chiefly be- cause many experts, engaged in what the historian egocentt i iaty to history, provide prepared texts. Since Jean Francois Champollion in 1822 learned to de- ‘THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY 1 cipher hieroglyphics, part of the work of Egyptologists and papyrologists has been to provide the historian with texts and translations of inscriptions and papyri found in the ancient Nile Valley, whether in Egyp- tian hieroglyphic or in cursive ic and dematic or in Greek, The Assyriologists, since Sit Henry Rawlin- son in 1847 deciphered Old Persian cuneiform and in 1850 Babylonian cuneiform, have been publishing and translating the texts found on the clay tablets of the ancient TigrisEuphrates civilizations. Biblical criticism, even before Erasmus, was directed to the effort of bringing the text of both the Old and the New Testament 25 close as possible to the original wording and of explaining as fully as possible the tions which they re- flected. Philology, as already explained, deals among other things with the derivation from variant texts of the most authentic ones (especially of classical liter- ature). The classical epigrapher restores and edits the texts of Greck and Latin inscriptions found on the gravestones, monuments, and buildings of ancient Greece and Rome. The paleographer, since the time that Mabilion (see p. 122) first formalized the prin- ciples of paleography and diplomaties, has been able to authenticate medieval charters and other docu- ments by their handwriting, which have been found to vary from place to place and from time to time, and by their variant but highly stylized conventions and forms, and to publish easily legible printed versions of them. The archeologist excavates ancient sites and provides the historian with information derived from artifacts such as statues, mausoleums, pottery, build-198 [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY tional form to motives he had imperfectly analyzed, that sl id bare features in his character he had never realized.” ** If Mortis R. Cohen is right, “To widen our horizon, to make us see other points of view than those to which we are accustomed, is the greatest service that can be rendezed by the historian, and this he can do best by concentrating on the spe- cial field which he studies to understand.” * Identification of Author and of Date Some guess of the approximate-date of the docu- ment and some identification of its supposed author (or, at least, a surmise as to his location in time and space and as to his habits, attitudes, character, learn- ing, associates, etc.) obviously form an essential part of external criticism. Otherwise it would be impossible to prove or disprove authenticity by anachronisms, handwriting, style, alibi, or other tests that are as- sociated with the author's milieu, personality, and actions. But similar knowledge or guesses are also nec- essary for internal criticism, and therefore the prob- Jem of author-identification has been left for the next chapter (pp. 244-8). Having established an authentic text and discov- ered what its author really intended to say, the his- torian has only established what the witness’s testi- mony is. He has yet to determine whether that testimony is at all credible, and if so, to what extent. ‘That is the problem of internal criticism. i , Hebert Pa to Mary Gladstone (New York, 2904), 1 The Meaning of Human History (La 1947), pea (cd.), Letters of Lord Acton [ 189 ] CHAPTER VII ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY, OR INTERNAL CRITICISM ‘Tae misrortan first aims in the exat timony to obtain a set of particulars topic or question that he has in ing by themselves, and unless to a hypothesis they are of doubtful value. But that is a problem of synthesis, which will be discussed later” What we are now concerned with is the analysis of documents for cred- ible details to be fitted into a hypothesis or context. they have a context or it What Is Historical Fact? In the process of analysis the historian should con- stantly Keep in mind the relevant particulars within the document rather than the document as a whole. Regarding each particular he asks: Is it credible? It might be well to point out again that what is mea by calling a particular ere not that it is actual what happened, but that it is as close to what actual happened as we can learn from a critical examination of the best available sources This means verisimilar at a high level. It connotes something more than merely not being preposterous in itself or even than plausible and yet is short of meaning accurately de- ‘See Chapter X. above pp. 45-940 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY scriptive of past actuality. In other words, the histor- an establishes verisimilitude truth. Though there is a hi two, they are not necessarily identical. As far as mere particulars are concerned, historians disagree relatively seldom regarding what is credible in this special sense of “conforming to a critical examination of the sources.” It is not inconceivable that, in dealing with the same document, two historians of equal al and training would extract the same isolated “facts” and agree with each other's findings. In that way the elementary data of history are subject to proof. A histo: ict” thus may be defined 2s @ partic- ular derived directly or indirectly from historical docu- ments and regarded as credible after cateful testing in accordance with the canons of histor (ee below p. x50). An infinity and a multiple variety of facts of this kind are accepted by eg., that Socrates really existed; that vaded India; that the Romans built the Pantheon; that the Chinese have an ancient literature (but here we intioduce a complexity with the word ancient, which needs definition before its factual quality can be considered certain); that Pope Innocent Iil ex- communicated Ki of England; that Michel- angelo sculptured “Moses”; that Bismarck modified the dispatch from Ems of King ms secretarys that banks in the United States in 1933 were closed for four days by presidential proclamation; and that “the Yankees” won the “World Series” in 1949. Sim- ple and fully attested lisputed. They are easily observed, easily recorded (if ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 441 not self-evident, like the Pantheon and Chinese liters: ture), involve no judgments of value (except with regard to the antiquity of Chinese ture), contra- dict no other knowledge available to us, seem other. wise logically acceptable, and, avoiding generalization, deal with single instances. Even some apparently simple and concrete state- ments, however, are subject to question. If no one disputes the historicity of Socrates, there is less agree- ment regarding Moses and earlier figures of Hebrew folklore. If no one doubts that Michelangelo sculptured ‘Moses,” a few still think that Shakespeare's plays wore in fact written by Francis Bacon, Doubt regard- ing concrete particulars is likely to be due, however, to lack of testimony based on firsthand observation rather than to disagreement among the witnesses. In general, on simple and concrete matters where test mony of direct observation is available, the testimony usually be submitted to tests of seliability that Il be convincing either pro or con to most competent and impartial historians. As soon as abstractions, value generalizations, and other complexities en- ter into testimony the possibility of contradition and debate enters with them. Hence, alongside the mul- titude of facts generally accepted by historians, exists another multitude debated (or at least debatable) by them, The Interrogative Hypothesis In analyzing a document for its isolated “facts,” the historian should approach it with a question or a set of questions in mind, The questions may be rela-42. UNDERSTANDING HISTORY tively noncommittal. (E.g.: Did Saul try to assassi- nate David? What were the details of Catiline’s life? Who were the crusading companions of Tancred? What was the date of Erasmus’ birth? How many men were aboard De Grasse’s fieet in 17817 What is the correct spelling of Sieyés? Was Hung Hsuichu’an a Christian?) It will be noted that one cannot ask even simple questions like these without knowing enough about some problem in history to ask a ques. tion about it, and if one knows enough to ask even the simplest question, one already has some idea and probably some hypothesis regarding it, whether im- plicit or explicit, whether tentative and flexible ot formulated and fixed. Or the hypothesis may be full- edged, though still implicit and in interrogative form. (Exg.: Can the Jews be held responsible for the eruciftion of Jesus? Did the medieval city de- velop from the fair? Why did the Anabaptists believe in religious liberty? How did participation in the American Revolution contribute to the spread of lib- eral ideas among the French aristocracy? Why did Woodrow Wilson deny knowledge of the “secret treaties?) In each of these questions a cettain im- plication is assumed to be true and further clarifica- tion of it is sought on an additional working assump- tion, Putting the hypothesis in interrogative form is more judicious than putting it in declarative form if for no other reason than that it is more noncommittal before all the evidence has been examined. It may also help in some small way to solve the delicate problem of relevance of subject matter (see Chapter X be- ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 3. low), since only those materials are relevant ‘which lead directly to an answer to the question oz indicate that theze is no satisfactory answer. The Quest for Particular Details of Testimony ‘As has already been pointed out, every historical subject has four aspects — the biographical, the geo- graphical, the chronological, and the occupational or functional. With a set of names, dates, and key-words in mind for each of these aspects, the historical in- vestigator combs his document for relevant particulars (or “notes,” as he is more likely to call them). It is generally wise to take notes on relevant matter whether or not it at first appears credible, It may turn out that even false or mistaken testimony has rele- vance to an understanding of one's problem, Having accumulated his notes, the investigator must now separate the credible from the incredible, Even from his “notes” he has sometimes to extract, still smaller details, for even a single name may reveal a companion of Tancred, a single letter the corvect spelling of Sieyés, a single digit the exact number of De Grasse’s crew, or a single phrase the motives of Wilson's denial, In detailed investigations few docu- ‘ments are significant as a whole; they serve most often only 2s mines from which to extract historical ore. Each bit of ore, however, may contain flaws of its own. The general reliability of an author, in other words, has significance only as establishing the prob- able credibility of is. paiticlar statements, From that process of scrupulous analysis emerges - a, -, = é- ,_, -44 [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY ment the process of establishing cre should be separately undertaken regardless of the general credi- bility of the author. Identification of Author ‘As has already been pointed out (p. 138), some {identification of the author is necessary to fest a doc: ument' In the subsequent process of determining the credibility of its particulars, even the most genuine of documents should be regarded as tance of frst esta ability is therefore obvious. Where the name of the author can be determined and he is a person about whom biographical data are available, identification is a relatively easy task. Because, in most legal and social science investigations, the of a document is personally known and available to the investigator, that question generally presents no insurmountable difficulties to lawyers and social sci- entists. ‘The historian, however, is frequently obliged to use documents written by persons about whom nothing or relatively littl known. Even the hundreds of bic graphical dictionaries and encyclopedias already in ‘existence may be of no help because the author's name is unknown or, if known, not to be found i the reference works. The historian must therefore de- pend upon the document itself to teach him what it ‘can about the author. A single brief document may teach him much if he asks the right questions. It may, ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 45 of course, contain explicit biographical deta to assume that would be begging the quest where it is relatively free from first-person much may be learned of the author's mental proc- esses and personal attitudes from it alone. Let us take the usual text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and assume for the sake of example that we have no knowledge of it except for what its own con- tents may reveal: Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and 50 dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great batt lace for those who here gave might live. It is altogether fi ting and proper that we should do this. But, in a sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot conse cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, dead, who struggled here, have consecrated ‘our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here, Tt is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task ing before us,— that from these honored dead we ‘ion — that we here hight I not have died in vain — thatus [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom —and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Even a hasty examination will suffice to make cleat that the author, at the time of writ i here”), that he wrote English well, that his address was a funeral oration (“we have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place”), that that he was an advocate of liberty and equality (or at least desired his hearers to think so), that he lived during the American Civil War, that he was speaking at Gettysburg, or possibly Vicksburg (‘great battlefield,” “four score and seven years ago”), and that he wanted his side in the war to be thought of as fighting for democracy (“government of the people, by the people, for the people”). If we forget the con- troversy among historians as to whether the words under God were actually delivered or were only after- ward inserted, we may assume that he subscribed, or wished to appear to subscribe, to the belief in a Su- preme Being. From a short document, it would thus appear, it is possible to learn much about the author without Knowing who he was. In the case of the Gettysburg Address a trained historian would probably soon de- tect Lincoln's authorship, if it were unknown. But even if he had never heard of Lincoln, he would be ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 47 able to tell that, in attempting to judge the truth of the particulars stated in that address, he would have to consider it as probably a public exhortation by a prominent antislavery Northemer after a major vic- tory over the Confederate States in the American Civil War. Many documents, being less modest and less economical of words than the Gettysburg Ad- dress, give their authors away more readily. Determination of Approximate Date Tt would be relatively easy, even if the Gettysburg. Address were a totally strange document, to estal its approximate date. It was obviously composed “fourscore and seven years” after the Declaration of Independence, hence in 1863, But few strange docu- ‘ments are so easily dated. One has frequently to re- sort to the conjectures known to the hi terminus non ante quem (“the point which”) and the terminus rion post quem (“the point not after . These termini, or points, have to be established by intemal evidence — by clues given rhin the document itself. If the date 2863 were not jit in the Gettysburg Address, other references n the speech could point obviously to the be ginning of the American Civil War as its terminus fon ante quem, and since the war was obviously still going on when the document was composed, its ter- minus rion post quem would be the end of the ‘War. Hence its date could be fixed approximately, ‘even if the first sentence had been lost, as somewhere between 1861 and 1865; and if we were enabled by other data to guess at “the great battlefiel14s [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY might even narrow that margin. Some documents might not permit even a remote guess of their ter- mini, but where the author is known, one has at least the dates of his birth and death to go by. The Personal Equation ‘This analysis of the Gettysburg Address (under the false assumption that its authorship is unknown) indicates the type of question the historian asks of oth anonymous and avowed documents, Was the author an eyewitness of the events he narrates? If not, what were his sources of information? When did he write the document? How much time elapsed be- tween the event and the record? What was his pur- pose in writing or speaking? Who were his audience and why? Such questions enable the historian to an- swer the still more important questions: Was the author of the document able to tell the truth; and if able, was he willing to do so? The ability and the willingness of a witness to give dependable testimony are determined by a number of factors in his per- i that together are some- equation,” a term applied to the correction required in astronomical observa- tions to allow for the habitual inaccuracy of individ- ual observers. The personal equat sometimes also called his “frame of reference, probably will be found more expedient to restrict the latter term to his conscious philosophy or philoso- phies of life in so far as they can be divorced from personality traits and biases of which he may or may not be aware. ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY ug General Rules Ina law court itis frequently assumed that all the testimony of a witness, though under oath, is suspect if the opposing lawyers can impugn his general char acter or by examination and cross-examination create doubt of his veracity in some regard. Even in modern Taw courts the old maxim falsus in uno, falsus in om- nibus tends to be overemphasized.* In addition, hear- say evidence is as a general rule excluded; * certain Kinds of witnesses are “privileged” or “unqualified” and therefore are not obliged to testify or ate kept from testifying; and evidence obtained by certain means regarded as transgressing the citizen’s rights — such as “third degree,” drugs, wiretapping, or lie- detector —are ruled out of some courts. ‘The legal system of evidence, says James Bradley Thayer, “is not concerned with nice definitions, or the exacter aca- demic oper are secking to determine, not what its nature, probative, but rather, passing by the inquiry, what among really probative matters, shal nevertheless, for this or that practical reason, be ex: cluded, and not even heard by the jury.” * Courts of assumption sible testimony in its favor and if the other side pre sents all the permissible testimony in its, the truth TS Wigtose, p. 8s : Ibid., pp. 238-45. BP. 225094 and 954-60. sea Teton on" Evidene at the Common Lew 90) BP 4150 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY will emerge plainly enough for judge and jury from the conflict or harmony of the testimony, even if some Kinds of testimony are not permissible; and possibly where much and recent testimony is available, the innocent suffer less often by such an assumption than the guilty escape ‘The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as judge he rules out no evidence whatever if it is relevant. ‘To him any single detail of testimony is credible— even if it is contained in a document obtained by force or fraud, or is otherwise impeachable, or is based on hearsay evidence, or is from an interested witness — provided it can pass four tests: (1) Was the ultimate source of the detail (the primary witness) able to tell the truth? (2) Was the primary witness willing to tell the truth? (3) Is the primary witness accurately reported with regard to the detail under examination? (4) Is there any independent corroboration of the detail under examination? Any detail (regardless of what the source or who the author) that passes all four tests is credible historical evidence. It will bear repetition that the primary witness and the detail are now the subjects of exam- ination, not the source as a whole, Ability to Tell the Truth (1) Ability to tell the truth rests in part upon the witness's nearness to the event. Nearness is here used in both a geographical and a chronological sense. The ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY ist reliability of the witness's testimony tends to vary in proportion to (a) his own remoteness from the scene in time and space, and (b) the remoteness from the event in time and space of his recording of it, There are three steps in historical testimony: ob- servation, recollection, and recording (not to men- tion the historian’s own perception of the witness's record). At each of these steps something of the pos- sible testimony may be lost. Geographical as well as chronological closeness to the event affects all three steps and helps to determine both how much will be lost and the accuracy of what is retained. (2) Obviously all witnesses even if equally close to the event are not equally competent as witnesses Competence depends upon degree of expertness, state of mental and physical health, age, education, mem- ‘ory, natrative skill, ete. The ability to estimate num- ers is especially subject to suspicion. The size of the army with which Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 3.. was said by Herodotus to have numbered 1,700,000, ‘but it can be shown to have been considerably less ‘by the simple computation of the length of time it would have taken that many men to march through, the Thermopylae Pass even unopposed. More re- cently by a similar computation doubt was thrown upon the veracity of a newspaper report from Moscow that one million men, women, and children paraded through the Red Square in celebration of the thicty- second anniversary of the October Revolution (No- vember 7, 1949) in a five and onehalf hour demon- stration, for it would requize more than fifty persons ‘a second to march abreast past @ given point to com-152 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY plete a parade of one million in five and onehalf hous.’ With some notable exceptions, such as the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror, histor- ians have been warmed against using any source of numbers before the end of the Middle Ages.’ The careful keeping of vital statistics was a relatively late innovation of the end of the eighteenth and the be- ginning of the nineteenth century. Previous to that time tax rolls and incomplete parish records of bap- tisms, marriages, and burials were the best in- dications, Even battle casualty statistics before the nineteenth century are suspect, and historians still disagree on the cost in human life of wars up to and including those of Napoleon I, and, in some instances, beyond. (3) Degree of attention is also an important factor the ability to tell the truth. A well-known story, no less illustrative if it be apocryphal, tells of a psychology professor who deliberately staged a fight in his cl room between two students, which led to a free-for- ‘When peace was restored, the professor asked each member of the class to write an account of what had happened, There were, of course, conflicting state- ments among the accounts, but, what was most nificant, no student had noticed that the professor in the midst of the pandemonium had taken out a banana and had peeled and eaten it. Obviously the entice meaning of the event rested upon the unno- ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 153 ticed act; it was an experiment in the psychology of attention. Because each student's interest had been fixed upon his own part in the drama, each had given an erroneous interpretation of what had occurred, Magicians similarly depend upon their ability to divert attention from things they are doing to perpetrate some of their tricks. The common human inability to see things clearly and whole makes even the best of witnesses suspect. (4) We have already discussed the danger of the leading question (p. 104). Such questions, by ing the expected answer, make it difficult to t whole truth. Lawyers also count the hypothetical {question (“Supposing you did agree with me, would you act as 1?”), and the argument load question (“Have you stopped beating your wite and the coached answer as belonging to kindred cal gories.* Such questions are especially liable to be m Teading if they have to be answered “Yes” or “No.” “Allport gives a striking illustration of the kind of mis- information that can be derived from the witness whose narrative is circumscribed by the questioner. He mentions an investigator who “secured fifty top- ical autobiographies, forcing all writers to tell about radicalism and conservatism in their lives,” and who from those biographies almost (but fortunately not quite) came to the conclusion that “radi conservatism constitutes one of those first-order v: ables of which all personalities are compounded.” (5) In the last instance the investigator barely ‘Wigmore, pp. 147-50 and 260-2, port, p. 137.154 ‘UNDERSTANDING HISTORY missed reasoning in a circle — from premise back to premise again. It has been contended also that one of the reasons why religious problems and events receive so much attention in the history of the Middle Ages is that its principal sources were written by clergy- men. If medieval architects, landowners, soldiers, or merchants had written more, they might have asked and answered different kinds of questions and a different pictuze of medieval life. Possibly, if the ‘writings of our own intellectuals should prove to be the major source for futuze accounts of our age, future historians will be misled into thinking that intellectu- als had a greater influence upon human aff time than they actually have, This sort argument must be especially guarded agai an effort is being made to ascribe unsigned writings to a supposed author, for it is easy to assume that the ideas of the writings are characteristic of the supposed author if those very articles are the basis of the as- sumptions regarding the author's characteristics. (6) One almost inescapable shortcoming of the personal document is its egocentrism. It is to be ex- pected that even a modest observer will tell what he himself heard and what he himself as if those de- ils were the most important things that were and done. Often it is impossible for him to story in any other terms, since that is the only way he knows it. This observation is a more or less in- evitable corollary of the caution with regard to atten- tion discussed above, The famous speech of the Comte de Mirabeau after Louis XVI's Royal Session of June 23, 1789, provides a pat illustration of how ‘TE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 155 easily such egocentrism may mislead the historian. Mirabeau (though speaking in the third person) told how he had said something about the necessity of force: “For we shall leave our seats only by the power of the bayonet. led to mention that several ‘others were expressing a similar determination at about the same time, though probably in more mod- crate language, Therefore historians trusting too con- fidently to Mirabeau’s testimony have sometimes made him the heroic center of a desperate crisis; still it is more probable that he was not so conspicuous or the situation so dramatic as he implied. In general, inability to tell the truth leads to errors of omission, rather than commission, because of Jack of completeness or lack of balance in observation, recol , or narrative. Such errors may give a pic- ture that is out of perspective because it subordinates ot fails to include some important things and over- emphasizes those it does include. Willingness to Tell the Truth ‘The historian also has to deal with documents whose authors, though otherwise competent to tell the truth, consciously or unconsciously tell falschoods. ‘There are several conditions that tend especially to- ward untruthfulness und against which the experience of mankind has armed lawyers, historians, and others who deal with testimony.”* , Source Problems of the French Cf, FM. and H. D. Fl zag; ef, abo pp. 123, 139, 144 on (New York, 393 igmore, pp. 176-99.156 [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY ) One of the most elementary rules in the anal- ysis of testimony is that which requires the exercise of caution against the interested witness. A witness's interest is obvious when he himself may benefit from perversion of the truth or may thereby benefit some ‘one or some cause dear to him. Certain kinds of propa- ganda are perhaps the worst examples of deliberate perversion of truth out of a desire to benefit a cause. In the seventeenth century the word propaganda was applied to Catholic missionary work without dis- patagement. Since the nineteenth- century, however, ithas been used more or less derogatorily to designate any kind of concerted movement to persuade and the instraments of such persuasion, The word may be modern, but propaganda and its methods have been familiar since efforts were first made to influence pub- ion, (2) Often the benefit to be derived from a perver- sion of the truth is subtle and may not be realized by the witness himself, In such a case the cause of pre- varication probably is bias. Ifthe witness's bias is favor- able to the subject of his testimony, it is frequently designated studium. If it is unfavorable, it may be designated odium or ira. The Latin words are de- rived from a declaration by Tacitus that he would write history sine ira et studio (thereby setting a standard that few historians, including Tacitus, have been able to achieve). Studium and odium, bias for and bias against, frequently depend upon the wit- circumstances and may operate in 2 fash- fon of which he himself may not be aware. It be- comes important to the historian to know what the — ¢——_ ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 157 witness's Weltanschauung (ot “frame of reference”) may be, as well as his religious, political, social, eco- nomic, racial, national, regional, local, fami sonal, and other ties (or “personal equation”) these factors may dictate a predilection or a prejudice that will shade his testimony with nuances that other- wise might have been absent. (3) The intended hearers or readers of a document, it hias already been remarked (p. 90), play an im- portant part in determining the truthfulness of 2 statement. The desire to please or to displease may lead to the coloring or the avoidance of the truth. Speakers at political rallies and at banquets, writers of wartime dispatches and communiqués, makers of polite letters and conversation ate among the numer- ous producers of documents that may subtly pervert fact for that reason. Akin to and often associated with interest and bias, which aze often socially determined, this motive is nevertheless different from them, being personal and individual, It may oceasionally stand alone 2s an explanation of prevarication. (4) Literary style sometimes dictates the sactifice of truth. Epigrams and — notoriously — slogans of war and polities (“L'état c'est mo fense but not one cent for tribut dies but never suc in the interests of accuracy and truthful reporting, would be robbed of pithiness and color. Authors of autobiographies and letters, especially when they write158 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY for private amusement, may feel tempted to state as fact what is only hearsay or tradition or even fiction; and frequently narrators and reporters (especi they hope for large audiences) seek to appear omni cient rather than to use the less vigorous word, the less striking phrase, the ifs and buts, the thereissome- reason-to-believe and the itisperhapssafelosay of more precise discourse. ‘The anecdote is especially suspect. Much too often sa subsequent invention to throw into humorous or striking relief some spectacular figure ot episode, The more apposite the anecdote, the more dubious it is ‘ly to be without corroboration. And yet the ex- istence of an especially pat anecdote has a historical significance of its owa —as showing the sort of thing ed of or imputed to the subject. A w Italian proverb describes such anecdotes as felicitous (ben trovato) even if untrue. Laws end conventions sometimes oblige wit- nesses to depart from strict veracity. The same laws of libel and of good taste that have encouraged the hid- ing of the “tesemblance to persons now living or dead” in fiction and moving pictures have precluded complete accuracy in some works of history. Some of the notorious inaccuracies of Jared Sparks as a his- torian were due to his writing of living characters from testimony by living witnesses who requested him not to use certain data."* Etiquette in letters and conversation, conventions and formalities in treat- ies and public documents require politeness and ex- ‘THR PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 159 pressions of esteem that are obviously false or empty. ‘A successful comedy, James Montgomery's Nothing but the Truth (1926), was written around the valiant effort of a young man to go through a whole day with- ‘out saying anything that was untrue; it nearly cost him all his friends, Religious concepts like the Chris- ‘an Scientist's interpretation of the ideas of evil, dis- ease, and death may lead to misunderstanding. Cor- porstions, commissions, and societies ate sometimes required by their articles of incorporation or const tions to meet periodically, but when their numbers ate small, the minutes of their meetings may be much more formal than the actual meetings. (6) Closely akin to this category ate the many stances of inexact dating of historical documents be- cause of the conventions and formalities involved. For example, the official text of the Declaration of Independence is dated “In Congress, July 4, 1776.” ‘To the unwary reader it would appear that those who signed it were present and did so on that day. In fact, the formal signing took place on August 2, 1776, and some members did not sign until a still later date.'* Some medieval rulers used to date documents as of certain towns though they were not at those towns on the dates indicated. The modem officia’s and ‘businessman's habit of sending letters on office sta- tionery regardless of where they may be ot of dictating ‘but not reading their letters, which are signed by a rubber stamp or a secretary, may make it very diff cult for future biographers to trace their itineraries, © Gail becker, Desaration of Independence (New York, 1923), Pp. 286-5160 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY Bank checks, having the city of the bank’s location printed on them, may also prove misleading as to the signer’s whereabouts. ) Expectation or anticipation frequently leads a witness astray. Those who count on revolutionaries to be bloodthirsty and conservatives gentlemanly, those who expect the young to be irreverent and the old crabbed, those who know Germans to be ruth- less and Englishmen to lack humor generally find dloodthissty revolutionaries and gentlemanly conser- vatives, ireverent youth and crabbed old-age, ruth- less Germans and humorless Englishmen. A certain Jack of precision is found in such witnesses because their eyes and ears are closed to fair observation; or because, secking, they find; or because in recollection, they tend to forget or to minimize examples that do not confirm their prejudices and hypotheses. (This sort of attitude is only a special kind of bias and might be regarded merely a5 a subdivision of Paragraph 2 above.) ‘Unwillingness to tell the truth, whether inten- tional or subconscious, leads to misstatements of fact more often than omissions of fact. When the same witness is both unable and unwilling to tell the truth {as is mostly the case to some degree at least), the his- torian has before him a document that commits errors oth of omission and commission, Yet he must con- tinue to bear in mind that even the worst witness may occasionally tell the truth and that it is the his- torian’s business to extract every iota of relevant truth, if he can. ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 161 Conditions Favorable to Credibility Fortunately there are certain conditions especially favorable to truthfulness, and students of evidence easily recognize them, They are frequently the reverse of the conditions that create an inability or an un- ingness to tell the truth. (1) When the purport of a statement is a matter of indifference to the witness, he is likely to be un- biased (2) More dependably, when a si dicial to a witness, his dear ones, or his causes, ‘That is why confessions, forcibly extracted and if deposed by those mental health, are considered excellent testimony, sometimes acceptable in law courts without other direct testimony." The historian must be careful, however, to make sure that the statement really is considered by the witness to be prejudicial to himself that of Charles IX’s claim of respons on of the Ems dispatch, and ex- Nazis’ or ex-Communists’ contrition over thelr youth- ful errors come all too readily to mind, In such cases, the deponent may be engaged in a subtle and per- haps unconscious form of self-pity or even of boast- ing rather than in confession, and other tests of trust worthiness must be sought. (3) Often, too, facts are so well-known, so much matters of common knowledge, that the witness would be unlikely to be mistaken or to lie about 7% Wigmore, pp. 305-5162 [UNDERSTANDING HISTORY them: viz, whether it rained last night, whether a prominent’ citizen was assassinated last Tuesday, ‘whether a famous bishop was a notorious philanderer, whether a well-known lord had the largest herd of sheep in the county, etc. Whenever the implications cof such testimony suggest that such matters are com- mon knowledge —and especially when they are also commonplaces —the absence of contradictory evi dence in other sources may frequently be taken to be confirmation, For example, it is a commonplace that old soldiers are grumblers, and, besides, many persons had abundant chance to observe this phenomenon in particular armies; hence we are prepared to believe the tradition that many of Napoleon's veterans were zgrognards even on otherwise inadequate testimony. If that kind of statement had been incorrectly reported, it would in all probability have been challenged by other contemporaries writing subsequently. This process of reasoning rests, however, upon a sort of argumentum ex silentio ("Silence gives con- sent”), and such arguments can easily be abused. Care ust be taken to ascertain whether, though apparently commonly known or commonplace, the matter under examination was in fact so regarded by other con- temporaries, and whether they ever had a chance to Jeam of and to contradict the earlier testimony. In times of panic, for instance, it is easy to exaggerate the number of enemies of the state, and the very ex: istence of the panic may lead to silence on the part of those who do not shate it. Where, on the other hand, there is any reason to believe a matter extraor- dinary, though commonly known, the argument from ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 163, silence would work the other way: the very fact that a statement of something extraordinary was not cor roborated in other sources that might have been ex pected to mention it would render it suspect. The ambivalence of the argumentum ex silentio makes it a weak test for most purposes. It is not the silence of other possible witnesses but whether an event was considered commonplace ot extraordinary that lends credibility to or removes credibility from single state- ments on matters of common knowledge. (4) Even when the fact in question may not be well-known, certain kinds of statements are both in- cidental and probable to such 2 degree that error of falschood seems unlikely. If an ancient in a road tells us that a certain proconsul built that road while Augustus was princeps, it may be doubted wit out further corroboration that that proconsul re built the road, but it would be harder to doubt that, the road was built during the principate of Augustus. Tf an advertisement informs readers that “A and B Coffee may be bought at any reliable grocer’s at the unusual price of fifty cents a pound,” all the infer- ‘ences of the advertisement may well be doubted with- ‘out corroboration except that there is 2 brand of coffee on the market called “A and B Coffee.” Al- though the opinion that “William Jones’ widow is a more charming lady than Mrs, Brown” may have no validity as testimony regarding the relative merits of the two ladies, it is probably good evidence on the physical condition of William Jones. Even the boldest propaganda may be made to yield credible information by a careful application of the164 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY rule regarding the incidental and the probable. Such a statement in 2 propaganda leaflet as: “Our aircraft easily overcame the enemy's,” would be, without con- firmation from more sources, thoroughly sus- pect with regard to the ity of the enemy. Yet it may be taken at its face value as evidence that the ‘enemy have airplanes (especially since it is not only icidental and probable but also contrary to interest that regard). And the statement may also have some value as evidence that “we” have airplanes (though that value is not as great as if the evidence were here also contrary to interest). When in a war or a diplo- matic controversy one side takes the trouble to deny the propaganda of the other, neither the propaganda nor the denial may be certified thereby, but it be- comes clear that the propaganda has seemed worthy of some attention to the other side. (5) When the thought patterns and preconcep- tions of a witness are known and yet he states some- thing out of keeping with them —in other words, if statements axe contrary to the witness's expectat Thus, a statement by 2 Soviet observer regardi stances of working-class contentment in a capitalist country or by a capitalist observer regarding in of loyalty in a Soviet country would be especi pressive Tt must always be remembered that the s well as most historians. Hence he can manufacture an air of credibility that may easily take in the unwary investigator. The existence of conditions favorable to ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 165 credibility such as these must fist be established and never taken for granted in any given instance. Hearsay and Secondary Evidence ‘The historian, let us repeat, uses primary (that is, eyewitness) testimony whenever he can. When he can find no primary witness, he uses the best seeond- ary witness available, Unlike the lawyer, he wishes to discover as nearly as possible what happened rather than who was at fault, If he sometimes has to make judgments, he does not have to pass sentence and hence he does not have the sare hesitation as @ judge to permit evidence that practice has ruled out of courtrooms. In cases where he uses secondary witnesses, how- ever, he does not rely upon them fully. On the con- tary, he asks: (1) On whose primary testimony does the secondary witness base his statements? (2) Did the secondary witness accurately report the p: testimony as a whole? (3) If not, in what deta he accurately report the primary testimony? Satistac- tory answers to the second and third questions may provide the historian with the whole or the gist of the primary testimony upon which the secondary wit- ness may be his only means of knowledge. In such cases the secondary source is the 's “original” fis knowl- edge. In so far as this “ an accurate report of primary testimony, he tests its credi he would that of the primary testimony itself. ‘Thus hearsay evidence would not be discarded by the historian, as it would be by a law court, merely166 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY because it is hearsay. It is unacceptable only in so far as it cannot be established as accurate reporting of primary testimony. A single example will pethaps suffice to make that clear. A White House cortespond- ent stating what the president had said at a press conference would be a primary source of information fon the president's words, The same correspondent telling a presidential secretary's version of what the president had said would be 2 secondary ot hearsay witness, and probably would be successfully chal- lenged in a courtroom; and yet if the correspondent were a skilled and honorable reporter and if the presi- deatial secretary were competent and honest, the cor- respondent's account might be a thoroughly accurate statement of what the president in fact had said. Even the most punctilious historian might retain that kind of evidence for further corroboration, Corroboration ‘A primary particular that has been extracted from a document by the processes of external and internal criticism so far described is not yet regarded as alto- gether established as historical fact. Although there is a strong presumption that it is trustworthy, the gen- eral rule of historians (we shall soon note exceptions, however) is to accept as historical only those partic: ulars which rest upon the independent testimony of two or more reliable witnesses.** ‘The importance of the independence of the wit- Gh eg,, Bemhcim, pp. 195-6 and 544; C. V. Langlois and CC. Scignobos, Introduction to the Study of Histor, te: G. C, Benry (London, 1912), pp- 199-205. ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 167 nesses is obvious. Independence is not, however, al- ways easy to determine, as the controversy over the Synoptic Gospels well illustrates. Where any two wit- nesses agree, it may be that they do so because they are testifying independently to an observed fact, but it is possible that they agree only because one has copied from the other, or because one has been un- duly influenced by the other, or because both have copied from or been unduly influenced by a third source. Unless the independence of the observers is established, agreement may be confirmation of a lie or of a mistake rather than corroboration of a fact. It frequently happens, however, expecially in the more remote phases of history, that diligent research fails to produce two independent documents testify- ing to the same facts. It is aso evident that for many historical questions — the kind that would especially interest the student of biography — there often can be no more than one immediate witness. Of the emo- tions, ideals, interests, sensations, impressions, private opinions, attitudes, drives, and motives of an individ- ual only that individual can give ditect testimony, un- less their outward manifestations are sufficiently well understood to serve as a reliable index. Even when ‘those inner experiences are known from the testimony of others to whom the subject may have told them, they rest ultimately upon his own powers of introspec- tion, The biographer is in this regard no better of than the psychologist — and worse off if his witness is dead and beyond interview. And all history is bio- graphical in part, The biographer does, however, have one advantage over the psychologist — he knows what168 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY his subject is going to do next. He therefore can reason from response to sensation, from act to motive, from effect to cause. The completed behavior pattern ‘may give confirmation to the biographer of the ward psychological processes of his subject. It follows, then, that for statements known ot knowable only by a single witness, we are obliged to break the general rule requiring two independent and reliable witnesses for corroboration, Hence we must look for other kinds of corroboration. A man’s pro- fessed opinions or motives it more acceptable as his “honest” opinions or his “real” motives if they are not in keeping with the pattern of behavior that would be “fashionable” in the society in which he moved but at the same time are in keeping with what otherwise is known of his general character.* The very si absence of contradiction) of other contemporary sources upon a matter appearing to be common knowledge may sometimes be a confirma. tion of it (see above, p. 162). In other cases, a docu- ment’s general credibility may have to serve as cor roboration. The reputation of the author for veracity, the lack of self-contradiction within the document, the absence of contradiction by other sources, free- dom from anachronisms, and the way the author's y. Conformity or agreement with other known torical or scientific facts is often the decisive test of evidence, whether of one or of more witnesses, That "The Sickness of Liberal Society,” Eehics, 3 Cf. FHL Kn LVI (2946), 90-1. ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY 169, Cellini saw fire-dwelling salamanders, devils, halos, and other supernatural phenomena would hardly seem credible to any modem historian, even if Cellini were othenwise generally truthful, consistent, and un- contradicted. And even if Cellini’s statements were confirmed by independent witnesses, the historian ‘would believe only that Cellini and his corroborators saw things they thought were salamanders, devils, and balos. General knowledge of how little effect a thumb ina hole in a dyke would have upon preserving a dyke that had begun to crumble would be sufficient to destroy credence in a well-known legend, even if there had been any witnesses to that Dutch hero's tale. Doubt can be thrown upon the old story that the po- tato was introduced into Ireland by Sit Walter Ra- leigh and hence to England by merely pointing to the fact that the Irish potato is of a different variety from the English potato.” What little we know about the ce of cause and effect induces us to be- notable contributions to anthropology ap- fore and around 1859, the birth of modern of the dence to a claim of English divorce case, Because the general credibility of a document can ry of the separate land," Journal of Mor tony, XXT (1949 ‘® GE F. J. Tesgat, Theory of History (New Haven, 1935), pp. 105-6.170 UNDERSTANDING HISTORY details in it, corroboration of the details of a witness's testimony by his general credibility is weak corrobora- tion at best. Likewise the argumentum ex silentio and conformity or agreement with other known facts may ‘be misleading. They are in the nature of circum stantial evidence, the weakness of which any reader ‘of court proceedings and detective stories knows While, in the cases under discussion, these tests are proposed only for confirmation of the direct testi- mony of one witness and ‘not as exclusive sources of evidence, their circumstantial or présumptive nature renders them suspect even for that purpose, Hence historians usually insist that particulars which rest on 2 single witness's testimony should be so designated. ‘They should be labeled by such tags as: “Thucydides for the statement Certitude vs. Certainty Since such precautions are not always taken and these single-witness statements are not always treated as probanda capable only of a lower order of proof, a curious paradox results. For many early periods of history, less disagreement is found among the sources, because there are fewer sources, than for more recent periods. On what happened one or two thousand crease in archeological, terials, the sources are few, fairly generally avai and known, and the contradictions among them rela- tively familiar if not always reconciled. On what hap- ‘THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY im pened last year, the sources are many and not always Known, and the contradictions among them not yet familiar or reconciled. It is easier, among the enot- ‘mous collections of little exploited or totally untapped materials on happenings of recent periods to find something unknown to describe or to reinterpret @ familiar story on the basis of hithesto unused docu- ments than to do either for events of remote periods. Hence, as general rule, the more recent the period of study, the more difficult it becomes to say some- ig that will remain long unchallenged; for both tensity of controversy and the likelihood of a new approach tend to increase with the proximity in time to one’s own day. Thus a greater degree of con: sensus and certitude may easily exist among histor! where the testimony is lacking than where it is f Pethaps nothing provides more eloquent proof than this that the historian’s “truths” are derived from analytical evaluations of an object called “sources” rather than of an object called “the actual past.”